13 - Hadassah's Partners

Summary

HADASSAH'S ENTERPRISE in Palestine was the largest collective project of women in the Diaspora on behalf of the Yishuv and, later, Israel, and remains so today. It depended for its success, however, on its partners in this enterprise: professionals in the Yishuv and Israel. These doctors, nurses, teachers, and others, most of them European migrants to Israel, gave of the energy, talent, and knowledge they had acquired in the countries in which they had been educated. They were the executors, and sometimes the visionaries, of Hadassah's various projects in the Yishuv and Israel. These people played a critical role in Hadassah's work for the Yishuv and Israel, and in its existence as a Zionist organization in the United States.

Henrietta Szold understood that only people who were part of the Yishuv could implement Hadassah's work in their community. On the basis of this view, she took one of the most significant steps in the history of Hadassah when, in 1929, she placed the administration of the Rothschild Hospital in the hands of Russian-born Dr Haim Yassky, who had come to Palestine as a pioneer. The first physicians employed by Hadassah in Palestine, including Dr Yassky's four predecessors as head of the Rothschild Hospital, were Americans. They made a significant contribution to shaping the medical services of the Yishuv in the 1920s, but they were considered outsiders and became embroiled in countless conflicts with Yishuv residents. Hadassah became an integral part of the Yishuv only after Dr Yassky took over as head of the hospital and director of the Hadassah Medical Organization. From then on, it was locally recruited people who directed the organization's projects. This was a critical factor in the success of these endeavours, and the key also to the success of Hadassah as a Zionist organization in the United States.

A review of the history of the Rothschild-Hadassah University Hospital confirms the thesis that key decisions regarding its medical character were taken by the ‘partners’. Most of the physicians at the hospital in the 1930s (slightly more than a decade after Hadassah started its medical activity in the Yishuv) had acquired their medical education and training in Germany.